


How I Met My Partner

by Not_You



Series: The Faceless Man and the Girl Wonder [1]
Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mentor/Sidekick, POV Outsider, Short, teen sidekick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 19:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3262484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I found the little bit I wrote about Laurie becoming Rorschach's partner in the first place, and realized that it conflicts nothing that happens later and truly belongs here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How I Met My Partner

She figures he must be crazy, muttering about her mother and shame and decency instead of introducing himself or trying to kill her, which is what a masked man in alley ought to do when he encounters another mask. She doesn't realize what he's mistaken her for until he presses crumpled bus fare into her slack, confused hand. Then it clicks, and she throws the bills down and leaps at him

"NOT A WHORE! NOT A WHORE!" Is far from the worst thing Johnathan Keller has ever heard in seventy years of living in New York, but the voice is so young and clear that it catches him most of the way up from sleep, and his confused brain, not sure where it is in its amphibious life of conscious and unconscious, conflates it neatly to one side with his little sister Callie, dead these five years, and he thinks, You tell 'em, doll. He sleeps through the banging of dumpsters and the rattling of trashcan lids, but if he rose and walked to his window, he'd see that crazy bastard Rorschach for the first time, and would probably feel a pang of sympathy for him as his snappy hat falls off in his struggle to keep a teenager dressed more or less exactly like a hooker from killing him.

"Not a whore." He repeats, and he's a little hoarse but that just seems to be something he can't help, and not a sign that he's perving on her. "My apologies, Miss--?"

"Silk Spectre." She loosens her grip on his lapels and he lets go of her wrists.

He nods, picking up his hat and carefully beating dirt out of. "I see too many girls your age who actually are working the streets. My mistake."

"No, no." She suddenly feels even more ridiculous in this clinging, diaphanous freak suit, and mean for jumping on a guy who was at least trying to help. "My mother dresses me like a goddamn whore, I should be prepared to be mistaken for one. Hell, at least you tried to buy a Greyhound ticket for me, not my virginity from me." Hat back on his head, he's straightening his coat now with an attention that's more catlike than prissy, smoothing out its crisp, deadly lines. She envies him, a faceless film noir character. He could be anybody under that.

"I know someone who could modify your costume."

"My mother would have a fit, but I'd love that." She crouches and gingerly picks up the crumpled bills, holding them by the corner. They're really too nasty to offer anyone. "Hey, you know what? It's my fault these are so gross, let me take them and I'll pay you back."

He holds out a spotless glove. "It's all right. Filth washes off."


End file.
